


Dyads on a Train

by DottieSnark



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas, F/M, Fluff, Implied Poe Dameron/Finn, One Shot, Snow, Strangers to Lovers, Trains, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:35:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24726826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DottieSnark/pseuds/DottieSnark
Summary: Two strangers, already dreading the holidays, wind up next to each other on a train. He's grumpy. She's nervous. They bond over snow.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 25
Kudos: 60
Collections: A Rey by Any Other Name, Discord Community Archive





	Dyads on a Train

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> This story was written for The Reylo Writing Den's A Rey by Any Name moodboard and ficlet event. Participants created their own moodboard and writers signed up for any moodboard to write a ficlet about. 
> 
> This moodboard was created by [Etherealthere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/etherealthere/pseuds/etherealthere)

Christmas. The most horrible time of the year. Ben Solo hated Christmas. He hated the music and the bright lights and the cheery people. Most of all he hated traveling eight hours, by train, to return to his least favorite place on the planet: his childhood home. Ben avoided his family as much as he could. They didn't get along. His mother worked too much and his father resented him for being born. They nagged him every Christmas to come home, though, and, like the spineless child he was, he complied. At least they let him be the rest of the year.

At this time of year, Amtrak was always crowded, so Ben was pretty lucky to get a row on the train all to himself. With each stop his heart pounded as passengers walked by his row, eying the empty seat next to him. There was no need to worry, though. Most people don't want to sit next to the six-three guy spilling over into the next seat. Ben cherished his extra legroom. The peace and quiet was an added perk.

A girl with too much luggage walked down the aisle, banging it against every seat she passed. She stopped at Ben's row. "Oh my God, empty seat? Score!"

Ben groaned. The train must've reached the point of capacity where even a cramped seat looked favorable. The girl lifted her suitcase above her head with surprising ease and stored it overhead, then sat down next to Ben, putting her backpack on the floor and her oversized purse on her lap. Just as predicted it was a tight fit.

"Sorry," Ben said and looked out the window.

"It's fine. I don't need much room." She had situated herself in such a way that she was using her backpack as a leg rest. She fiddled around the seat, taking things in and out of her purse like her cell phone and some tic-tacs. Yes, this arrangement was uncomfortable, but did she have to squirm so much?

Ben checked his phone. Still seven more hours until he got off. "Where's your stop?" he asked.

"Hoth," she said, "I'm transferring trains at the Hosnian station, though."

Ben frowned. They were going to be stuck with each other for the rest of the ride.

"You?" she asked.

"Same—no transfer. Just Hosnian."

"Got family there?" she asked.

The worst part about sitting with people was the small talk. He had only engaged with her to calculate how long this cramped Hell would last, but she took it as an invitation for conversation. "Yep," was all he said, hoping she'd get the message.

She didn't. "That must be fun!"

"Fun. Sure."

"I'm going to see my brother…he's actually my foster brother, but I think of him as my real brother…got any siblings?"

"Nope."

The was a lull and Ben hoped it would stick. It didn't. "So, what's your name?" she asked. "I'm Rey."

"Ben."

"Where are you coming from, Ben?" she asked.

This time Ben ignored her question and let out an exaggerated sighed. Why couldn't she just leave him alone?

"I'm coming from Jakku…I've never actually been up north before…got any tips for surviving the snow?"

Ben looked over at her. He hadn't given her a second glance since she sat down. She was pretty, beautiful even, but had a strange sense of style. Her hair was up in not one bun, but three, stacked vertically on top of each other. Why? What possible functionality could that have? She also wore sleeves that weren't actually attached to her shirt.

"Dress warmer."

It kept going like that for a while until she finally grew bored of his near-monosyllabic answers and took out her phone. Ben leaned back in his seat and tried to sleep.

* * *

Of course, Rey had to sit next to the biggest grump on the train. Her seatmate didn't have to be her new BFF, but couldn't he at least try to be friendly. Couldn't he see how nervous she was? She confided in him that this was her first time out of the South, but he couldn't care less. Why, oh why had she even agreed to this trip in the first place? It was all Finn's fault. Finn and his stupid fiancé's. Actually, Rey quite liked Poe, at least until he suggested she come to Hoth of all places for the holidays.

"It's not Christmas without snow," he had said, and of course Finn took his side.

Finn didn't get it. His parents—his real parents—were gone. Their deaths, a car accident, were tragic, but at least he had closure. He knew what happened to them. And he had nothing to wait around for in Jakku. He always dreamed of leaving. As children whenever he would say he had nothing keeping him in Jakku. Rey, fighting back tears, would ask him "What about me?"

"Well, you'd come with me, duh."

But Rey never did come with him. She still had something in Jakku. Hope. Hope that her parents, who left her at the babysitter's one day and then never returned, would finally come back. Hope that depleted each and every day until she was finally open to the idea of leaving. "Just for the holidays," she said. She bought her ticket—a cheap one including a long layover in Hosnian and prepared for the most daring adventure of her young life.

But of course this Ben guy had to ruin it with his poor attitude. She tried to be friendly but he wouldn't engage. Switching to Candy Crush calmed her nerves for a little while, but she eventually grew bored of that too. She put her phone away and tried to follow her seatbunk's example, but sleeping was a struggle. No matter which way she sat, and there was very little leeway for movement, she could not get comfortable. She drifted in and out of a restless sleep. This wasn't her bed. She had been shuffled around from foster home to foster home a lot of as a kid and had slept in her fair share of different beds, but ever since she turned 18 she had grown used to the firm mattress at her own studio apartment. Anything else just wasn't comfortable anymore.

Finally, she gave up on trying to sleep and looked out the window. She must have been out longer than she thought. The landscape outside their window was covered in a blanket of white. The trees and plants looked like they had been airbrushed with white paint.

Rey leaned over Ben, reaching for the window with her hands. The glass was cool to the touch. What would the snow feel like, she wondered.

Maybe Poe was right. Maybe snow did make Christmas more magical.

"Ahem!"

Rey turned to find Ben awake and glaring at her. She blushed and sat back in her seat. "Sorry." She would just have to be satisfied with watching the snow from there.

"What were you doing?" Ben asked with a snarl.

"Looking out the window, duh!"

He rolled his eyes. People from the North always took snow for granted.

"What's it smell like?" Rey asked.

"What?" Ben asked.

"Snow! What's it smell like? You know how rain has that musky smell? Does snow smell like that?"

"It doesn't smell like anything," he said.

Five words in one sentence. His vocabulary was improving.

"Do you want to switch seats?" he asked. And consideration of others. That was new too. Had the man beside her been abducted by aliens and replaced with a doppelganger while she was asleep?

Instead of snarking like her instinct told her, she wordlessly nodded and stood up, letting him out before taking his spot. Once seated again she put her hands against the window again. The glass vibrated with the shaking of the train. She studied the bared trees and naked flowers. They weren't dead, they were just sleeping.

"Why are you going so far up north?" Ben asked.

She looked back at him but kept her fingers on the window. "So now you want to talk?

"Now you don't?"

She laughed. She had been quite chatty when they first arrived. Jitters. Maybe he felt similarly but responded differently to nerves. Maybe, like a giant toddler, all he needed was a nap to start behaving civilly.

"My brother and his fiancé live up there," she said. "I told them to come down to Jakku like we do every year, said there was no way I was traveling that far up north, but they wore me down."

Ben nodded. "Been there. I swear every year I won't return home for the holidays, and yet somehow every December I wind up on this train."

They talked a little longer. Nothing important and soon the conversation hit another lull. Ben opened up a book and Rey went back to Candy Crush, but at least this time the silence between them wasn't awkward. There were a few more words shared between them here and there, but nothing of substance.

A couple hours later the train pulled into Hosnian station. Ben got out first, taking down Rey's luggage from above and handing it to her before grabbing his own. She tried not to read anything into it. Hers was probably just in his way. Without another word to each other, they left their row, walked down the aisle, and left the train.

Hosnian. It wasn't quite as north as Hoth, she would be transferring to another train for the rest of her journey, but it was still the furthest north she had ever gone. She looked around. This station was so much bigger than Jakku's. She was completely lost.

"Do you need help?" Ben asked. Surprisingly he hadn't immediately taken off upon arrival. He hovered instead as if he was overlooking a baby lamb.

"No," Rey said, insulted by the infantilization. She was a grown woman who could take care of herself.

"Alright," Ben said. He crossed his arms and waited for her to make a move. Rey looked up at the signs above their heads, but all they said were the various times of arrivals for incoming trains. Her transfer wouldn't be arriving for another five hours.

"Fine," Rey huffed. "Where's the exit?"

"You sure you got time to kill?"

"Exit," she repeated.

"Follow me."

Rey followed him up some stairs and down a corridor until they reached the front doors of the station. Rey hesitated for a moment, feeling the cold glass panel of the door through her fingers. Should she have put gloves on? The snow was still coming down, covering the roads and sidewalk. Cars drove past, muddying the stark white snow. She stepped out onto the sidewalk, the snow crunching beneath her converses, and took a deep breath. She coughed. The air froze her lungs.

"Oh my God!" Her teeth were already chattering. It was so freaking cold! Why didn't anyone warn her it would be this cold?

She felt something heavy on her back and it took her a moment to realize there was a black, wool coat perched on her shoulders. She turned around to see Ben was now one article of clothing short. He removed his beanie too and offered it to her. She was too cold to reject it.

"Aren't you cold too?" she asked

Ben shook his head. "I grew up in this weather. I'll be fine for a little while. Come on. There's a coffee shop on the next block. Let's get you a hot chocolate."

"With marshmallows?" she asked.

He laughed. It was a goofy sounding laugh but coming from a man who had been so sullen mere hours ago it was the most beautiful sound in the world. "Sure, whatever you want." They walked together down the block, and by the time they reached the coffee shop their fingers were intertwined.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to thank my beta, [DarkMage13](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkMage13/pseuds/DarkMage13), for betaing this fic.


End file.
